The Sea of Flames
In All the Light We Cannot See, the Sea of Flames is symbolic of greed and hubris. the novel gradually tells the story of the stone, the goddess of the sea places a curse on the stone, which was a gift for her lover, when it's stolen by a prince. The curse brings eternal life to whoever possesses it, but brings only death to their family and loved ones. So while the holder of the stone my live forever, they will have a life full of sorrow and will have to be constantly avoiding thieves who are after the precious value of the Sea of Flames. the only way to break the curse of the Sea of Flames, is to return it to its rightful place, the sea. Throughout the novel, we can see man's own fulfillment of the curse in Sergeant Major Von Rumple's seeking after the stone, which is so compulsive and obsessive that it eventually kills him. When Marie-Laure and Werner return the stone to the sea towards he end of the novel, it signifies their ability to unify despite their French and German rivalry, and shows that neither of them were greedy and desiring the stone for its value. Image from Wikipedia
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The Sea of Flames is an allusion to the Delhi Sapphire, an actual stone with a similar legend behind it.
The Ocean
The surrounding ocean represents a sense of entrapment for Marie-Laure and Werner. They feel as though they cannot escape the lives they are in. Marie-Laure is trapped by her blindness and her inability to be completely and totally independent from others, she tries to escape this through reading, and she is mentally travelling to another place. Werner is contained by his childhood and label as an orphan. He attempts to escape by going into school, but soon finds himself incapable of getting away from that as well. |